Monday, December 13, 2010

"A Confederacy of Gangsters"

Yesterday made it twelve years since the US Supreme Court handed down its famous Bush v. Gore decision that ended, both justly and mercifully, the madness that was the 2000 presidential election. Fox News presented a retrospective this weekend and watching it served to bring my blood temperature up to the boiling point once again.

In my adult life, two events have taught me like no others just exactly who the Left is and what they are capable of doing. The first was the Senate Judicial Committee hearings on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the High Court. From very the beginning the Left was determined to sabotage his nomination and when it looked as though all their effort was for naught, they produced, at the eleventh hour, one Ms. Anita Hill, a reluctant witness against Thomas who made unprovable charges of disgusting conduct on his part.

If you're old enough to remember the drama that surrounded that event, you'll recall that it captured the nation's sustained attention like few others. At the time, many who had been around in the early 1950s as well, compared it to the famous Alger Hiss case in its effect. Ideological lines became solidly drawn and starkly clear. You knew where everyone stood.

The second was of course the Left's drive to overturn the results of the Florida vote in 2000, and thereby the results of the national election as well. As I watched the story recounted this weekend, I thought I remembered something Democrat pollster and television commentator Pat Caddell had said at the time. Even he was embarrassed by and disgusted with his party's behaviour. A quick Google search and there it was.

I'm a liberal Democrat. I started in Florida politics. I worked for George McGovern. I worked for Jimmy Carter. I've worked for Ted Kennedy, Mario Cuomo. Nobody can question, I think, my credentials and my convictions. But I have to tell you, at this point it's hard to believe that my party, the party I've belonged to since my great, great grandfather of my family, has become no longer the party of principles, but has been hijacked by a confederacy of gangsters who need to take power by whatever means and whatever canards they can say.

Who is the Left? They are the ideological heirs of Lenin and Stalin. Follow their pedigrees; they always lead there. Those formerly among them who finally became disillusioned with the tactics of Uncle Joe and a thousand other atrocities besides expressed their own "second thoughts" many years ago now.

What will they do? As their genealogy demonstrates, they'll do whatever is necessary to capture and retain the power they need to institute their hideous dream of the omnicompetent state. It's not simply a case of the ends justifying the means. Rather, because the end is a dream, that is, it's neither real nor grounded in reality, any and all means are justified. The only constraint they recognize is whether or not the means are effective.

Anyway, Republicans who continue to insist on compromise, on reaching across the aisle, on making a deal, would do well to remember this about most of their opponents. Or, if they can't, at least recall what happened just ten short years ago.